[Foundation-l] Ancient Greek Wikipedia, possible reconsideration

[Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)]

Dovi Jacobs <dovijacobs at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  Now that is a real argument, but I think you misrepresent
>  the "consensus". As somebody above pointed out, the issue
>  is when the "consensus" of the language committee is at
>  serious odds with a major position in the community.

It's logically impossible for the subcommittee consensus to contradict
the community consensus. See my response to that earlier comment:
<http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/28327/focus=28344>.


Dovi Jacobs <dovijacobs at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  Ever since "native" was (wrongly) added to the policy
>  there has been serious opposition, and I dare to say
>  that there was never anything close to acceptance. What
>  a project needs is some *competent* contributors, not
>  specifically *native* ones (myself at he.wikisource
>  as a live example).

There have been many arguments for and against the current policy from
many users, but no consensus in any direction. I've only seen two
objective possibilities that don't depend on subjective judgments:
* require native speakers. This is objective and measurable, and has
some support in the community. However, there's no all-out consensus
in the community.
* deregulate the language criteria, so that any active community can
create a wiki in any language. This is simpler, but similarly without
consensus.

Your suggestion to require "competent" contributors also seems
subjective to me. What is a "competent" contributor? How can we
measure "competency"? Do we simply ask the contributors whether
they're competent, and approve the wiki if they answer yes? (Why would
they answer no?)

Another detail you don't address is whether we want wikis in languages
nobody will read. Should we have wikis in Klingon, the language spoken
by warrior aliens in Star Trek? How about Quenya and Sindarin, the
languages spoken by Elves in Tolkien's books? These all have language
codes, but no real users.


Dovi Jacobs <dovijacobs at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  grc.wikipedia has a firm base of worldwide classicists,
>  students, and enthusiasts, some of whom (and extremely
>  qualified) had been working on it directly, and is "live"
>  in a way similar to Latin (though admittedly not to the
>  same degree. It qualifies under an objective, workable
>  policy definition.
>

I'm not opposed on principle to a policy that allows ancient
languages, but we need objective measurable criteria. I don't think
"notability", "competence", featured articles on the English
Wikipedia, or the other suggestions are objective and measureable.

-- 
Yours cordially,
Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)